08/07/2025 10:10
Kimi Antonelli has revealed the staggering scale of damage his
Mercedes received following his crash with Isack Hadjar at
Silverstone. On Lap 18 of the British Grand Prix, Hadjar was
unsighted by heavy spray at Copse corner, and rammed into the back
of Antonelli's car, destroying his own Racing Bulls machine.
Antonelli was swiftly told by engineer Peter Bonnington to retire,
his fourth DNF in six races, with the Italian explaining that he
was losing "100 points of downforce." Lewis Hamilton lost around 20
points of downforce after striking a groundhog in Canada, which
equated to about half-a-second per lap of performance lost, meaning
Antonelli suffered losses of around 2.5s per lap. "It just seems
like everything is going wrong at the moment, and it is hard to
find positives," Antonelli told media, including RacingNews365. "We
took the gamble on lap one, which didn't work because when I
pitted, the VSC came out and I just could not build any temperature
into the tyres, and went back onto the inters. "Obviously, the
visibility was extremely poor, and I don't know why, but I could
feel it coming. "In the moment, I was lucky to still keep it on
track, because the hit was massive, but it is a shame to finish
with another zero. "I lost like 100 points of downforce because
the whole diffuser was gone, and it was extremely difficult to keep
the car on track. "There was no one to blame, and when they told
me it was going to restart, I was a bit unsure about that, because
the visibility was still very poor at low speeds. "So at higher
speeds, it would have been even worse, and Isack was also just a
passenger. I braked a bit earlier, just because it was so hard to
see where the corner was and Isack couldn't see me." For his part,
Hadjar felt the crash was "quite predictable" owing to the low
visibility, and that there was little point in restarting the race
in such conditions.
